What Makes a Community Intelligent?
It’s not all about technology, size or wealth. That's according to the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF) and something I happen to agree with completely. By the way, the ICF is a New York City-based "Think Tank" that studies the economic and social development of communities and for the past 17 years has been bestowing an award for the "Intelligent Community of the Year".
The Internet has changed the world we live in and continues to do so. In 1995, less than 1% of the world's population had an Internet connection. Today, that figure is about 40% and rapidly climbing. The Internet has changed the way we work, socialize, create and share information, and organize the flow of people, ideas, and things around the world. It's made our planet a much smaller place.
As our globe shrinks, a fundamental question is "what constitutes a community?". Is it a neighbourhood, a city, a region, or a Province? Is it exclusively urban, or can it be rural, or even a bit of both? Reminds me of similar questions like "what's the difference between a stream and a river?" and "what's the difference between a pond and a lake?". I've settled for generally classifying them under "water courses" and "water bodies". I think the same applies to communities and the ICF appears to agree. Over the years, the ICF’s honorees have included cities of 10 million people and rural communities of 17,000. According to the ICF, a community will have "demonstrated leadership in creating inclusive economic prosperity, solving social problems and enriching quality of life using information and communications technology (ICT)". This definition has no spatial boundaries. In fact, the ICF's evaluation criteria applies a methodology that gives equal weight to all communities, regardless of their size.
So, once we've decided on a community, is the degree of access to high-speed broadband within a community the sole or key determinant of its intelligence? Most would think so and I found myself among that group prior to attending ICF's 2015 Annual Summit. Of course, the availability of broadband in a community is crucial within the context of an intelligent community. As the ICF puts it, "Broadband is the next essential utility, as vital to economic growth as clean water and good roads.". However, as illustrated below, the ICF has also included five other key indicators in determining a community's intelligence.
Source: Intelligent Community Forum (ICF)
In order to add value and keeep up with accelerating technological advances, the ICF considers the existence of a Knowledge Workforce that demonstrates continuous improvement in an evolving range of skills as another important indicator. Innovation, pursued through strengthened relationships between businesses, government, and institutions, is also considered essential to the growing reality of interconnected economies. The ICF considers Digital Equality as an indicator with the premise that everyone in a community deserves access to broadband technologies and the skills to use them. A recently added indicator is Sustainability in terms of a community's ability to improve living standards while minimizing environmental impacts. Finally, the ICF includes Advocacy as its final indicator. Listening to the presentations of former award recipients and current award nominees at this year's summit, I feel that Advocacy is the great differentiator in identifying a truly intelligent community. Although communities demonstrated varying degrees of having broadband infrastructue, a knowledge workforce, innovation, digital equality, and sustainability, what truly set a community apart from the rest was demonstrated leadership from all sectors of the community to embrace change.
So as vital as it is, broadband infrastructure alone does not render a community intelligent. Economic, social, and environmental factors, as well as leadership, come into play with the goal of creating an overall improvement in the quality of life ofthe community. For more information on the ICF and their Intelligent Community initiatives, visit: www.intelligentcommunity.org.